There is often a demand for cleaning surfaces of bodies of water such as lakes or oceans to remove pollutants. In the past, ship accidents, for example, have ended with disastrous consequences for the marine fauna and flora and have also entailed an economic catastrophe for the fishing and tourism industries located in the contaminated regions. The result of a shipwreck may be pollution due to the leaking oil in particular.
However, the causes for oil pollution of the surfaces of bodies of water are not limited to shipping accidents. Oil contamination also occurs due to industry in coastal regions, leaking pipes at the site of oil delivery itself, natural oil contamination at the ocean bottom as well as deliberate oil contamination by ship crews. To eliminate the layer of oil formed in various ways in the area of the surface of a water system, oil combating systems, in particular oil combating ships are used. In conjunction with the process of skimming the oil that has leaked, there is often the problem that oil control measures must be interrupted because of high seas. Such interruptions have negative consequences for the entire oil fighting crew, in particular the oil leakage may spread out as a thin layer of oil over a large area of the surface of water. In addition, at high seas the layer of oil is broken up into small lakes of oil, which are difficult to locate as part of the oil-fighting measure. In addition, the oil becomes emulsified, i.e., it combines with water and air and thus becomes increasingly more viscous, which makes the separation of oil from the surface of the water as well as the subsequent separation onboard the oil-fighting ships much more difficult.
The document DE 21 21 646 A1 describes a marine vessel for fighting oil layers. With this marine vessel, an opening is provided in the area of the bow section, through which water contaminated with particles of dirt, in particular oil particles, enters the hold as the marine vessel travels over the surface of the water and then the particles of dirt can be removed from this hold with the help of a suction device. After passing through the opening in the bow section, the water laden with particles of dirt flows past by an edge into the hold.
The document DE 102 21 069 B4 describes a device for picking up particles from the surface of a water system by utilizing hydrodynamic separation. In skimming an oil film from a water system, it flows along the underside of the bow of the oil-collecting device up to a separation blade, which separates the oil film from the main flow and introduces it into a particle separation chamber, which is also referred to as the moonpool. An eddy is formed at a breakaway edge of the separation blade which accelerates the oil being picked up toward the free water surface in the particle separation space. The particle-laden water entering the particle separation space in this way is processed further in that the particles of oil pass out of the particle separation space over a ramp and into the particle-collecting space. The particle-collecting space serves to concentrate the particles thereby separated. The particles are then pumped from there into storage tanks.
One key for efficient utilization of such a device is to minimize the water passing over the ramp into the particle collection space. To achieve this and at the same time to compensate for the dynamically changing low position of the ship because of the continuous uptake of oil, it has been proposed that height-adjustable embankments be used between the particle separation space and the particle collecting space. The use of ballast systems would also be conceivable. However, these measures require a relatively great technological effort and take up a great deal of space onboard the carrier ship accommodating the device. This is to the detriment of the storage volume available for the particles to be taken up.